"Leave? But the fight's not over." He hefted his spear. "Somebody saved my neck. I'm not running away while I can still help."
"I am sure you are a strong fighter, Joshua Oak." Olkeloki favored him with a smile that might have been complimentary or might have been patronizing. "But the time for fighting draws to an end. The laibon have decided how best to end this. We would have done it first, but such things take time and a great deal of preparation."
Oak's ready response was overwhelmed by a new kind of thunder, the likes of which he'd never heard before. Merry Sharrow, however, recognized it instantly.
"Mount St. Helens," she shouted above the intensifying din. "I was home asleep when it blew up. It threw me out of bed. Seattle isn't that far from the site and—"
Before she could finish, the sky and storm clouds above the Mountain of God lit up with multiple bursts of red lightning. A wave of hot air swept down the mountain's flank to stagger the onlookers. Merry clung to Oak to keep from being knocked down while Olkeloki leaned hard on his walking stick.
Explosions of lesser intensity continued to sound from deep inside the mountain. Peering through the hot wind, they watched as the shetani began to retreat, scrambling and clawing their way back toward the clouds. At the same time the ilmoran turned and began to retrace their steps down the mountainside. Not a victory, then, Oak thought. Stalemate.
Something was burning the back of his right hand and he shook it off. Pumice and ash were starting to rain down as Olkeloki led them back beneath the shelter of the trees.
"We must get back to the kraal," he told them. "I do not think this stage of the eruption will last long, but we should seek shelter."
"How would you know?" Oak grabbed at the old man's blanket. "This isn't an old volcano. Even a non-expert like myself can see that."
Olkeloki nodded. "Ol Doinyo last erupted in nineteen sixty-seven."
"Okay." Oak let go of the blanket. "Just don't try telling me that a bunch of old men had anything to do with it blowing its top tonight. You just timed everything well, that's all."
"I would not try to tell you anything, Joshua Oak." Was the old man smiling at him or not? "What matters is that we have turned back the shetani. They will consider carefully before they try to come through again in such numbers. They will wait until the opening from the Out Of is widened and made permanent. Then they will use it to come through in places where people will not know how to stop them. Unless we can seal the weakness first."
"Ouch!" Merry slapped at her arm where a hot ash had landed. "What you're saying is that they can use the actual split in the Out Of to come through elsewhere, like here?"
"Yes. Or in downtown Manhattan, or Piccadilly Circus in London."
As they crouched beneath the trees Oak tried to envision the nightmare that would result from a sudden outbreak of shetani in a densely populated urban area. Frightening enough to confront an army of such horrors here in an open plain. Imagine thousands of them suddenly materializing on the Mall in Washington or in New York's Central Park. He could just see the municipal and federal governments trying to decide how to deal with an invasion by supernatural forces. Meanwhile the ravening shetani would take a city apart.
Washington seemed impossibly far away as he retreated from the erupting Mountain of God in the company of hundreds of silent Maasai warriors. Modern weapons might take care of the shetani; if not the guns and bombs Olkeloki spoke contemptuously of, then lasers and flame-throwers. Even so, thousands of people would perish and civilizations would quake. And hadn't the old man spoken of billions pouring through from the Out Of? Since everything came from the Out Of, it stood to reason it had to be a much bigger place than the real world. Under the shetani assault civilization might give way to something straight out of Dante's Inferno.
He thought of all the shetani who'd already slipped across, who had been coming through for years, infiltrating the real world in a steady stream, disguising themselves as chunks of shredded tire rubber, lining the highways and byways of the developed countries. Now they were getting ready to move, to make a final assault on an unsuspecting mankind. No way could a bureaucracy cope with that. And when the last remnants of an enslaved humanity had been exterminated, the shetani would turn on one another, murdering and slaughtering, until the earth had been transformed into a lifeless globe.
Of course, he reminded himself, none of that appalling scenario need come true. All they had to do to prevent the world from being turned into a charnel house was to reach the source of the main breakthrough without attracting the shetani's attention and seal it off forever.
"This way," shouted Olkeloki, pointing to his left. "If all has gone as planned we will not have to run all the way to Ruaha."
They followed the laibon into the bush and practically ran into a brand-new Land Rover. A single very young moran stood in front of the vehicle. He raised his spear until he recognized the laibon, then grinned and put the weapon up. Old warrior and young embraced.
"Muani," Olkeloki told them, making introductions. The teenager nodded, lighting up the night with his smile. Ash continued to rain down around them. "One of my grandsons. When we arrived at the manyatta I was concerned at our lack of transportation. Muani has been to school. Someday I think he will make a very fine mechanic." He spoke to the youth in Maasai and the young moran beamed with pride.
"You can drive such a vehicle, Joshua Oak? I would do so myself but my eyes are not what they used to be."
"You bet I can," Oak told him.
The three of them piled into the big four-wheel drive. A five-pound lump of hot lava smashed into a thornbush nearby, setting it afire. Ol Doinyo Lingai continued to fulminate and roar behind them.
The engine turned over instantly. He flicked on the lights and powerful halogen beams sliced through the darkness. Another lava bomb landed on the roof, sounding larger than it was. His spirits rose when he saw that the gas tank was nearly full.
"Which way?" Even inside the Rover the thunder of the fractious mountain made it hard to make oneself understood.
Olkeloki murmured a few last words to the young warrior. The two embraced again and the youth dashed off into the brush to rejoin his fellow ilmoran. Then the laibon climbed into the seat next to Oak. For a long moment he sat there, staring out of the windshield as though aligning some built-in compass, then pointed.
"That way. I must confer with the other elders. Then we must go south, to Lake Manyara. There is another there I should speak with. From there we go to Dodoma and thence to Iringa, which lies but a few hours from Ruaha itself."
Oak put the Rover in gear, began picking his way down the slope. "Where'd your grandson rent a car like this, anyway?"
"Rent?" Olkeloki looked amused. "This is a CCM Land Rover. Do you not recall our matatu driver telling you on the way to the border that only the local political party has ample transportation? But since this is a socialist country where everything belongs to the people, Muani knows that the Land Rovers of the CCM belong to him as well. It will not do a few politicians any harm to walk for a while because we have temporarily borrowed their transportation."
Oak grinned. "Wouldn't hurt if he'd borrowed it from Washington, either."
Merry let out a yelp as a huge figure suddenly materialized alongside the Rover. It was no shetani, Oak saw immediately. Olkeloki rolled his window down and spoke to the new arrival while Oak kept them moving away from the mountain at a stately five miles an hour.
"Relax, Merry," he called back to her. "I know this guy. He's the one who saved my life back there on the hill."
Olkeloki glanced sharply at Oak. "That decides it, then. He is marked."
A few more terse, shouted words passed between the warrior and the old man. Without breaking stride the giant disassembled his huge spear. Then he jumped into the Land Rover as Olkeloki held the door open for him. Merry made room as he crawled in back. He had to bend forward so his head could clear the roof.
"This is Kakombe. He is an Alaun
oni, or leader, among the senior warriors."
Oak shifted gears, enjoying the feeling of the Land Rover. It looked brand-new. Leave it to an impecunious government to supply its field operatives with the best (and most expensive) equipment available.
"Pleasure's all mine. I didn't get a chance to thank you back there. You took off before I could find my tongue again."
"Shetani would have ripped it out," he replied in lightly accented English. He grinned at Merry. "Hello. Sorry it's a little cramped back here. I don't mind if you don't."
"Do I have a choice?" She smiled back at him. "I'm Merry Sharrow, that's Joshua Oak."
He nodded understandingly. "Yes, the two il—two Americans who returned with the laibon to help us against the shetani."
"We're helping our own people, too. They're in as much danger as you are. Probably more so."
Kakombe looked solemn, then spoke softly to Olkeloki. The old man translated.
"He says that he's pleased to meet both of you. That you fought bravely, Joshua Oak, if not as well as a Maasai, and that he respects both of you for coming all this way to do battle against such great evil."
Oak glanced into the back. "Why didn't he say that himself? He speaks excellent English."
"Kakombe is an Alaunoni. As such he is expected to be perfect in all things. He will speak English when he feels confident with the words, but he is too proud to make a mistake. This comes from when he was a child and had a speech defect. The other children used to make fun of him."
Merry studied the powerful bulk scrunched up on the other half of the seat. "I bet they only did it once. We're glad to have you with us, Kakombe."
"Be careful of what you say and how you say it, Merry Sharrow," Olkeloki said.
She sounded suddenly concerned. "Did I say something wrong?"
"No, but you must also be careful not to say things too right." The old man spoke firmly to the giant and Kakombe responded irritably.
"Remember," Olkeloki explained, "that Kakombe is an Alaunoni. When a woman smiles favorably on him and speaks words of praise, it would be natural for him to think she might have more than casual conversation on her mind. Kakombe knows your language but not your ways, and you are not yet familiar enough with his."
"Oh, I didn't mean to give him the wrong impression. How so I correct myself?"
"Stop smiling at him like that, for one thing."
"It's the only way I know how to smile."
"Um." Olkeloki assumed the look of a confused parent.
"Are you telling us that after fighting for his life against a few thousand nightmares the hulk here can still have sex on his mind?" Oak inquired.
"Josh!" Merry's jaw dropped.
"Grow up, Merry. Some guys are turned on by fighting. Plenty of women, too."
She looked as though she wanted to say something but couldn't find the right words.
"It is the business of a senior warrior," Olkeloki intoned, "to think only of three things, fighting, cattle, and women."
Oak nodded understandingly. "I've got friends back in the Bureau who'd go along with two out of three." He squinted into the night. "Hey, isn't that the road?"
"Yes." Olkeloki did not squint. "Turn to the right here. Soon we will be back at the kraal. There we will find food and rest waiting for us. In the morning we will rise early and start south."
Oak looked thoughtful. "Who do you have to see at this Manyara place?"
"Lake Manyara. There is one there who has lived long and knows much. His perception differs from ours and he is more sensitive to the places between the real world and the other. Between the worlds lies a hollow space, like the cavity between the two panes of an insulated window. I cannot see into it, but the Patriarch can."
"Sounds like an interesting person," Merry opined.
"Most interesting. I have talked many times with him and have always emerged from such conversations wiser than when they began. No one knows how old the Patriarch is, but as you will see, his age is written on his skin and his teeth."
"Lost them all, has he?" Merry sounded sympathetic. "My maternal grandfather went through that."
"No, he still has his teeth. The sign of age is not that they are gone, but that they are crossed. Now let me rest. This has been a strenuous evening and I am tired." Merry sensed he would answer no more questions that night.
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18
Lake Manyara—24 June
The vast sheet of open water shimmered in the morning sun, a quicksilver valley between two escarpments. As they drew near, Oak and Merry were able to gauge its true extent. And according to Olkeloki, Manyara was one of the Rift Valley's smaller lakes.
During the morning they'd stopped twice, once for a cold drink and again to top off the Land Rover's water bags. Both times they overheard tourists discussing the previous night's brief but violent eruption of Ol Doinyo Lengai.
Ever attuned to irony, Oak conjured up an image of the busloads of tourists standing on the laibon hill snapping away with their little automatic cameras as ilmoran did battle with shetani and complaining about the poor lighting. Many would be incapable of seeing a battle for survival as anything more than another attraction staged for their benefit. That's all Africa was to most Americans and Europeans: a gigantic exotic tourist attraction, Disneyland with real animals instead of audio-animatronics. No doubt such people found the little towns Oak and his companions had driven through all morning "quaint." Back home they would be called slums. Location was everything!
As the single-lane road crowded down the escarpment they entered a real forest, the first they'd encountered since leaving Virginia. Birds sang from secret places in the canopy. The forest clung to the well-watered slope of the escarpment. Beyond lay open plains and the lake. Wildebeest and hartebeest roamed the shoreline in uncountable number, the herds spotted here and there with clumps of zebra and gazelle. Looking like water-worn brown boulders, hippos lined the far shore of the main stream that fed the lake. Their stentorian oinks reverberated across the banks, a lexicon of unsullied grouchiness.
After his surprisingly sound night's sleep on the floor of a laibon's hut, Oak was full of confidence and high spirits. The shetani had been thrown back into whatever black pit they'd emerged from and he, Merry, Olkeloki, and Kakombe were on their way south to fix things so such an intrusion could never happen again.
Merry wiped sweat from her forehead and cheeks. "It's hotter here."
"It will be hotter still in the south," Olkeloki warned her. "And it is not hot enough to use the air conditioning. We must conserve petrol."
She studied the crank set in the center of the roof. "Why don't we open the top, then?"
"That would not be a good idea here."
"Why not?"
"Yeah, why not?" Oak added. "I could use a little fresh air myself. These windows don't let much of a breeze in."
"Because the forest of Manyara," the old man explained as they bounced down the narrow dirt track. "is the only place in Africa where lions are known to live in trees. If one were to roll lazily off a branch beneath which we happened to be passing, it would become too crowded in here and the lion, being the guest, would immediately set about rearranging the seating to suit his own preferences."
That was the last time either Merry or Oak suggested opening the roof. Oak, who had been driving with his left elbow stuck out the window, discreetly tucked it against his side.
"How much farther?"
"There is a small stream, Maji Moto. Hot water in Swahili. The Patriarch can often be found camped near there. If he is not there we will have to search him out."
"I'm not too keen on hiking through the jungle," Merry told him.
"You can stay with the car, Merry Sharrow. The Patriarch will not have wandered far. He is old and does not travel as he did in his youth. And," he could not keep himself from adding, "this is woodland forest, not jungle."
"What's he like?"
"You will see. I person
ally find his company charming."
Yeah, but you talk to ghosts and spirits, too, she told herself. Olkeloki didn't understand. Maybe Oak could handle the heat—summer in the eastern U.S. was no picnic. But she was from the Northwest, for crying out loud! It was like an oven in the crowded Land Rover despite the fact that all the side windows were open.
Go ahead and complain, she admonished herself. Catch the looks on their faces: Shouldn't have dragged a woman along. She could imagine Kakombe's response. Well, she'd melt into her walking shoes before she'd ask for the air conditioning. If the big man could handle riding for hours practically bent over double, she could damn well sweat a little. She could stand to lose a few pounds anyway.
Between the trees and the lake they caught glimpses of vast herds of tanklike Cape buffalo. Beyond, the water was stained pink in places by immense flocks of flamingos. Olkeloki finally decreed a halt where a small rivulet cut across the track in front of them. It was singularly unimpressive and stank of sulfur and brine.
"We can rest and eat. If the Patriarch does not join us soon we will go and look for him."
While Maji Moto was a lukewarm disappointment, the glade in which they parked the Land Rover offered shady compensation. High green grass grew in the open space beneath the trees. Nearby a herd of impala grazed contentedly, seemingly indifferent to the newcomers but in reality very much aware of the humans' presence. From time to time the male would lift his pale head to search with limpid brown eyes for signs of bachelors intent on making off with one or more of his harem.
Having met too many copperheads and cottonmouths in the Deep South, Oak was concerned about encountering snakes in the high grass. Olkeloki assured him that the best way not to find one was to look for one. The old man and Kakombe shared milk and yogurt while Merry and Oak stuck to the dried meat and fruit that had been packed for them by the women of the kraal.
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